of gold! I glanced around the place. On the shelves and rafters, on
chairs and under bunks, were cans filled with gold. There was a snug
fortune in sight. Any one could have slipped in and stolen the lot. I
took Lippy to task about it when he came in. He did not seem at all
concerned, however.

"Pshaw," he said, "I always have quite a lot of gold about. But no one
would steal it. I've never lost anything."

But as the Yukon and New York are a long way from where Oo-koo-hoo was
hunting, let us return to his Moose Hills.


THE WAYS OF THE MOOSE

Moose mate in September and October, and during this period great
battles between bulls frequently occur before the victor walks off with
his hard-won spouse. The young--either one or two, but generally two
after the mother's first experience--are born in May, in some secluded
spot, and the calves soon begin to follow their mother about, and they
follow her, too, into their second year. Horns begin to grow on the
young bull before he is a year old, but they are mere knobs until he is
a year and a half old, when spikes form; by the third year he is
supplied with antlers. The perfect antlers of a big bull sometimes
measure seventy inches across, yet every winter--in January or
February--the horns are shed. During the mating season moose are
frequently hunted by the method known as "calling." The hunter, with
the aid of a birch-bark megaphone, imitates the long-drawn call of the
cow, to attract the bull. Then, when a bull answers with his guttural
grunt of Oo-ah, Oo-ah, the Indian imitates that sound, too, to give the